Review=How to locate registration place when the image does not fit the instructions

elizabethwach1

In Review-- of "Rhodesia voter registrations, 1938-1973," the project instructions give several examples for locating the place of registration. however, what happens when we have variations that do not fit the examples. for example, Batch # MS6Y-TQC has two places printed at the bottom of the claimant's signature-- can both be right? Or if the forms are not stamped? Do we accept the district of the witness for the place of registration of the claimant? Do we just go ahead and use the "final" Causeway place for registrations? I need to know so that as a reviewer I do not make unnecessary changes that will go beyond the 20% cut off.

Mirevo

Hello Elizabeth,

The Field help of Registration Place may answer your question:

The registration place may be indicated either at the top of the first page of the document or with the claimant's signature of declaration on the last page of the voter registration packet. If, and only if, the registration place that was was not written elsewhere on the document, index the registration place stamped on the document. On "Claim for Transfer" documents, index the electoral district to which the record is being transferred, along with the country, if listed, in this field. 

There is no indication to index the district of the witness for the place of registration of the claimant.

gary_noble

Please DO NOT PUT ANY RECORD TO CAUSEWAY. It is not correct. Causeway is the main post office in Salisbury, the stamp says P.O. Box 8434, Causeway, some of the forms say "on completion please return to Chief Registering Officer, P.O. Box 8434, Causeway" It is the postal box for mail in returns from around the country. Already 11000 records have been incorrectly indexed, reviewed and published to Causeway. Also the place standardiser then gets hold of them and in turn incorrectly dumps them to Causeway, Manicaland which some random spot in the east of the country. The project instructions were very poorly written for this project, logic would have been to say look at the residential address where the claimant lived to determine the correct place. Some of those rubber stamp place names at the bottom do not make any sense, as often there are 2 or 3, often in very vastly different places around the country, different to where the persons actual recorded residence was.

The country constituencies varied over the years, but the country was basically divided into 25 constituencies. Gatooma constituency for example covers a large swathe of land from nearly by Kariba dam all the way down to the Midlands, yet the standardiser is dumping everyone in this constituency to Gatooma town.

Additionally Salisbury was sub divided into a further 18 sub constituencies, and Bulawayo into 9 sub constituencies. Project Instructions do not take this into account, so unfortunately by following PI and indexing any of these subconstituencies from only the stamp, without the additional main town name, the standariser is doing what is does best and is botching all these names, and dumping them as follows: Greendale and Jameson to United States. Avondale and Marlborough to New Zealand. Highlands to Scotland. North and Bellevue to France , Queens Park, Belvedere, Salisbury North, Salisbury South, Hartley and Victoria to Australia. Southern and Eastern to Sri Lanka and Cameroon, Central to Paraguay. Western to Sri Lanka and Uganda